Oceans and Woodsmoke- British Coastlines and Baby Steps in Pyrography

Hello wonderful readers!

I’m afraid this post has been a bit of a long time coming, hasn’t it… How is it May already?! I hope your 2017 is off to a cracking start!

By way of a quick catchup, here’s a little about my year so far, and why I’ve been ignoring my blog-writing duties!

I had a little adventure to Edinburgh with my partner back in February, my first time in Scotland! The flight in was really quite amazing- zooming right in over the sea, feeling like you’re almost skimming the various little jutting islands and great hulking boats chugging out of the harbour!

The city centre itself was really something else- with all the hills and different street levels, it’s possible to get some really spectacular views over the rooftops! The castle is visible from wherever you are sitting proud up on its mountain, watching over and protecting all the smaller buildings that sprawl out and around it.

A large part of my time since Christmas has been split between working on my Silent Book concept for the yearly competition at Bologna and preparing for another North Somerset Arts Week with some of my local artist chums! This time around, all my work was inspired by the theme of “Wild Coast”, working from a brief I wrote up back in January to create a completely new range of occasion greetings cards, prints and large artworks, to explore some of my favourite journeys from the past couple of years in and around British and Irish coastlines.

Working so hard in my silent book project to tell the narrative through pictures alone I found spilled over into this “Wild Coast” brief- even into the greetings cards! I began the ideas process for these cards by thinking which animals I could use to celebrate each occasion. After plenty of sketching and research into the animals themselves, the designs started to take shape, including dogs, seals, rays, crabs and puffins.  Before I knew it, the puffins had organised themselves into a little family, and through a series of three occasion cards told the story of the birth of a puffin couple’s first chick!

Over the next couple of days, I’m working to upload some of these occasion designs to my Thortful profile- here –  ready for sale- keep your eyes peeled for lots of coastal creatures!)

North Somerset Arts Week takes place every two years. It’s easy to forget what can be, and what is achieved in that length of time as you plod through your day-to day life! In my practice alone, I finally listened to various arty friends and set out working with gouache instead of normal watercolour during this time, and it’s brilliant- I feel able to get far more texture and colour into my work than I ever could before. Similarly, after years of admiring pyrography but never trying it myself, I was kindly bought a set of wooden discs and a pyro-pen to play with for my birthday back in February.  I wanted to explore pyrography  within the theme of “Wild Coast” for the exhibition as well, using some of the same creatures from the occasion cards- a perfect medium to illustrate the rugged perseverance of animals existing in harsh coastal climates.

The pen I’ve been using is an Antex Craft pen, which is suitable for pyrography as well as fabric distressing, wax artwork, embellishment and (even!) as a mini iron!  There are many different tips for all these purposes that you can easily attach and detach- quite a few of which are varying nib-sized pen shapes. In the box, along with the tool and nibs, you receive a little stand to protect your work surfaces as the hot metal cools down.

(I’ve only touched upon what this tool can achieve in terms of pyrography so far, and haven’t even begun to explore its other abilities yet!)

To work with, as you might expect, it’s just like a pen- but your drawings are permanently etched into the surface of whatever you’re working on. The small wooden slices I received to practice on (as far as I can tell) are slightly sanded, but their natural grain still runs in rings out towards the edges. This grain looks very pretty and adds a nice extra bit of texture to the finished drawing, but if you’re used to working on smooth paper it’s definitely something to get used to- the pyro-pen likes to try and follow each of the rings, so if your design cuts across them it can be difficult to keep it on track!

I found it easier to try and work WITH the grain than against it- taking a look at any one disc before starting, you might see places where certain lines of your drawing can combine with the natural pattern of the wood. However, I found quite a lot of what I wanted to achieve forced me to cut across this grain, and after experimenting a little I found that:  a) drawing out your design first, with quite a hard pencil, can help form another natural channel for your pen to follow, and b) using dots to make up lines can flow better than trying to draw one continuous line!

I can show you an example of what I mean in point b) with this particular seal design:

The shading on his belly, as you might be able to see, was achieved with a sort of dotted, stippled effect of quick dabs with the pyro-pen- which ended up giving him a sort of mottled, freckly look!

I’ve only had positive experiences with this tool so far- it heats up quickly, has two different settings of heat for different depths of shading, and has produced some really lovely results! The next step is to work onto a larger piece of wood, and draw more of a composition than one single design…

Even if it doesn’t feel like it in your day-to-day grind, you’re always developing, evolving and improving… So just go for it, and don’t give up!

(P.S. The little mouse mentioned in the previous post is now running wild back in the fields of Wales, after a winter season of building his strength back up!)

The AutumnHobbit

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